Naked Power: The Practice of Stripping as a Confidence Game

Abstract

The stripper-customer interaction is a complicated manipulation of emotional labour and symbolic communication. Using a series of carefully constructed interactions resembling a confidence game, strippers create and maintain control over their customers. This article uses findings from a participant-observation study performed in Hawaii and explores the motivation, social roles, and consequences involved in the striptease act. In an attempt to acquire a monetary reward, strippers: (1) forge feelings of intimacy and emotional connectedness; and/or (2) fulfill customer fantasies by assuming the sex- object role. This article concludes: (1) strippers have power in their individual interactions with customers; (2) this power does not translate into gender relations in mainstream society; and (3) the emotionally and sexually manipulative act of stripping has outcomes of psychological and social estrangement, stigmatization and potential victimization for the dancers.